Madison County budget cuts mean less plowing, no bridge repair

WAMSPVILLE - Madison County residents may see noticeable changes next year in the services the highway department provides as a result of a nearly $1.8 million reduction in the department's budget.

Allocations for road rehabilitation, bridge repairs and snow plowing are all stated to be cut significantly in next year's county budget. The highway department's $12 million budget has been reduced by about $5 million over the last five years, Highway Superintendent Joe Wisinski said.

"My biggest concern is how much we can continue to go this way," he said. "We're already doing things, we're already making cuts to things that need to get done simply because we don't have the money. At what point does it just get completely counter-productive? We need some mechanism to reverse the trend."

Wisinski credited a lack of mandate relief and the imposition of the property tax cap with the county's financial challenges.

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"Residents from this county need to get more educated about the conditions we're facing and if they don't want to see bridges being closed and roads not being plowed, they're going to have to make their voices heard at the state," he said.

Next year, $500,000 will be cut from the department's allocations for road paving. While 20 miles of county roads are programmed to replaced each year, only 13.2 miles will be able to be rehabilitated next year. Deferring that work to future years will only mean more damage to the county's roads and an inevitably higher cost when they are replaced, Wisinski said.

Wear and tear on roads beyond the expected lifespan will create new problems for the highway department they wouldn't normally encounter if the road was replaced. The department's current mechanism of rehabilitating roads already allows for cost savings; highway workers recycle the top four inches of material by regrinding it and mixing it in with new material to repave the road. Wisinski said if rehabilitation doesn't happen and the roads continue to deteriorate, that won't be an option any more and will mean higher costs to the county when the roads are eventually replaced.

Another $200,000 was cut for bridge repair and replacement in next year's budget. The county owns and maintains 128 bridges and receives no state or federal aid.

Without an allocation for bridges, nothing can be fixed and bridges will continue to deteriorate, Wisinski said.

"The list of bridges getting to the point of failure just keeps getting bigger," he said. "And we keep getting farther and farther behind."

At the top of that list is the North Court Street bridge. An estimated 5,000 cars travel over the bridge a day. If it was closed, those traveling to Wampsville would have to reroute to the other end of North Court Street by driving through Oneida or Canastota.

Wisinksi said they want to avoid closing bridges "at all costs" and he's been trying to get people's attention for several years but said "these county-owned bridges are falling through the cracks of the system."

The last county bridge to be replaced was one on North Lake Street in Oneida in 2008.

The most noticeable reduction in the highway department's budget may be in snow plowing. The department's snow road patrol will lose $200,000. Wisinski explained that the previous system allowed crew supervisors to work throughout a 24 hour period and through the weekends in the winter to pinpoint "trouble" areas like snow drifts and black ice and dispatch crews.

Instead of calling in every snow plow operator, that system allowed only those necessary to be called in to take care of specific problems.

Without that measure, the highway department will have to rely on calls the 911 Center receives for hazardous road conditions and respond to those. There will be less overnight and weekend plowing. If a significant storm is expected to hit the county, Wisinski said crews will certainly be called in, but isolated conditions and hazards will have to wait until crews come back on the clock at 3 a.m. to be taken care of, leaving a five-hour window where roads won't be manned by snowplows.

Another $550,000 will be cut for the purchase of new equipment. With an extensive fleet of equipment, Wisinski said calculated replacement on an annual cycle is necessary to avoid additional costs. The older the equipment gets, the more money will be dumped into repairs so the county will be forced to pay more money in the long-run, he said.

Other areas of the department's operations, like road striping and signs, will be cut $240,000. While it's been the department's practice to restripe roads every year, it's been able to do it less and less and will realize that even more so next year. The same applies to road signs. Wisinski said the department tries to keep signs in proper operating order with sufficient reflectivity. As signs age and weather, they may be replaced less frequently.

The Madison County Board of Supervisors will hold two public hearings on next year's proposed budget Nov. 27 at 9:50 a.m. and 7 p.m.